


for the call of the running tide

by lesbianmcqueen



Category: Teen Beach Movie (Movies)
Genre: M/M, cross-posted to FF.net, dumb and angsty, unrequited (?) love, why is tbm2 the gayest movie in film history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26811580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianmcqueen/pseuds/lesbianmcqueen
Summary: You ache as you watch him try to hold his head above water, wish you could pull him back to that sun-drenched shore where girls were simple and gold could stay.
Relationships: Brady/Tanner (Teen Beach Movie)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	for the call of the running tide

He’s half on top of you, asleep, his head buried in the crook of your neck and his hand curled just beneath your breastbone. Something about this—maybe the familiar sound of the ocean, the sight of the waves, the little sigh he makes like he’s dreaming of home—makes you feel like crying.

You press your lips to the top of his head: Not a kiss, not yet, just your closed mouth in his perfect hair. You would wonder how it came to this, but you know how.

Your story is not a linear narrative. It is not moving picture perfect. In your head, it looks like this:

Six years old, on the floor of Mack’s grandfather’s house. Your eyes light up when the surfer boy comes on screen. You copy every dance move, every smooth slicking back of hair, your mouth matching his in a well-rehearsed echo. The movie is your first love. He just happens to be your favourite part of it. 

You are sixteen the first time you see him for real, so close you can touch him. Not a hair out of place even as the Surfers' dance kicks up the sand. He turns to wink at you, his gleaming smile landing like a spotlight. For a moment the whole beach burns brighter.

At some unknowable time between these two points—both after and before him, sometime during all those those sun-scorched blue-white bleed-together days—you kneel on your board in the middle dead and empty ocean. It's not until the sun begins to choke the water that you take notice of how long you've been here, staring at nothing, your legs cramping beneath you. The strangest part is, didn't you _know?_ Didn't you paddle all the way out here fully aware there wasn’t a wave to be caught?

Your heart leaps when you see him again, when you and Mack are somehow so much older and he and Lela still in the throes of the same decades-long, hairspray-shining youth. He throws himself into your arms and the sand is everywhere: in your eyes, your trunks, the crooks of your knees. The hug constricts your ribcage. Even so, the breath you take tastes sweeter than the one before. 

Time skips to now, to the awe in his gaze when you show him your boards, the sincerity of his praise, the way he brushes his fingers against your arm a moment later.

And back to the beginning of the summer, when Devon teasingly asks if you've found a replacement for him and you say _Yes—he’s the best surfer I know—and prettier than you._ You frame it as a joke, but the truth of it burns like sunlight through an open window, and isn’t it funny that Mack wasn't the first person you thought to mention? 

He speaks to you of Lela and his words are crushing and beautiful. Until now, fear was foreign to him, and doubt, sorrow, anger, pain—but now every one seems to be washing over him at once, relentless as a storm-swept sea. You ache as you watch him try to hold his head above water, wish you could pull him back to that sun-drenched shore where girls were simple and gold could stay. But there's nothing you can do.

In the end he has to take it, learn from it, become softer and sweeter for it. He bites his lip as he looks at the water and suddenly you hope he’ll never have to learn what heartbreak means. Almost, almost you wish you’d never met. You just want him so much to be happy, to clasp Lela’s hands in yours and make her promise that she will never let his laughter fade like that again. That she will always be there to protect him—brush the salt from his lashes, wipe the wetness from his bright eyes, hold him close whether or not the surf is dangerous that day.

You stare, heart pounding, straight into eyes bluer than unbroken water. _He’s_ the one whose hands you want to clasp. You want to pull him gently nearer, rest your forehead against his, tell him it will be okay even if nothing is certain anymore.

You want to lick the ocean from his lips—

You flee back inside and he finds you swaying in front of the couch, staring a little dazedly at the scarred, sunbleached floor.

“Brady?” His hand finds your arm, holds you steady. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” you say, as you try and fail to laugh. “It’s cool. everything’s—” You drop to the couch, practically dragging him with you, “—chill.”

He giggles nervously. “You don’t sound chill. You sound—” He falters. “Worried?”

You meet his gaze beneath your lowered brow and then look down at your arm, which he’s still clutching tight. “No, I’m fine.” Your voice pitches too high on the last word.

He watches you carefully and you see the gears turning in his lovely head. “You’re... lying.” He frowns suddenly, sharply, like the motion hurts, or like he isn’t quite sure what he’s doing. “I don’t understand. Brady, why would you lie to me?”

“I wouldn’t! I mean, not without—reason, I guess—I don’t know—it’s just—I’m feeling a lot of, um.” You glance down at his hand on your arm. “Feelings. Right now. Weird ones. And I don’t really know—what to do.”

He shifts even closer, so that you can feel all the warmth of him against your side; you nearly choke on your next breath. “Oh,” he says, very gently.

“You’re really pretty,” you blurt, and bury your face in your hands. “...dude.”

His touch slips away. Your heart sinks, but it’s nothing you weren’t expecting.

And then he wraps an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close. “I know that,” he laughs.

You lift your head to gape at him. “No, I mean like—I—” Your voice weakens. “I think I’m—”

_Fallin’ for ya._

You want to put your mouth to those words, but your throat is sewn shut, and you just let him hold you while you stare at your own flip-flops with your eyebrows knotted.

“I don’t want you to go,” you say.

His face splits into a grin, wide and white and sparkling. His easy joy is like a punch to the gut. “Well, that works out, ’cuz I don’t want to leave.” He nestles his chin in your hair. Beyond the breath you're trying not to take, you smell all the wind and salt of him.

“Tanner.”

“Bra-ady,” he murmurs, your name half a melody on his tongue.

“What if you have to?”

There is a long, long stretch of almost-silence where all you can hear is the lap of the surf on the sand.

Finally he giggles, softly, self-consciously. “So what?” He takes your hand for a moment and squeezes it tightly. “I’ll always come back.”

And now he’s lying curled above you, asleep, and you are worse for the wear. Your love for him is as stark and great and painful as your love was for Mack at the start of the summer; contradictions be damned, it is still wonderful and it still _hurts_.

You run your hand through his hair and realize with a shiver that it is finally starting to get ruffled. You wish you could just let him sink deep, deeper still, into this world and into your arms without fear of him drowning. But no matter how many precautions you take, when you step onto that board and paddle out past the surf to solid blue, there’s a chance you might never come back. This thing between you is precarious. Stars crossed and seas at high tide. You can't risk being the weight that sinks him. 

He sighs. The sun descends over the pink horizon. You squeeze your eyes shut, force yourself to remember: No matter how perfect the frame, if the film gets stuck in the projector, it will burn. You have to keep the movie rolling, rolling, rolling. 

**Author's Note:**

> ode to my favourite dcom. originally published to fanfiction.net in 2017 and newly revised. kudos / comments always appreciated !


End file.
